Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The 2025 “World Happiness Report,” produced by the Wellbeing Research Centre at the University of Oxford, powered by Gallup analytics and in partnership with the UN, is out. The bad news is that Americans, despite all their wealth and power, only rank 25th in the world for self-reported happiness and well-being.
I am interested in these findings because I teach a course on the History of Happiness. It is clear from the studies that have been done that helping others, including strangers, having empathy with others, forming strong and lasting social relations with others, and showing gratitude to others are all highly correlated with self-reported well-being.
The Gallup researchers found that the Scandinavian nations, with their socialist traditions, rank highest for happiness or well-being. But the Latin American countries of Costa Rica and Mexico also rank high. Ireland, Austria, Canada and Germany are all happier places than the United States.
America is so miserable among industrialized democracies, the authors argue, for a few discrete reasons.
First of all, too many of us are eating alone.
Sharing meals with other people has an unexpectedly strong influence on our sense of well-being. It is as powerful a predictive factor for happiness as having a steady job and being well-off.
People who eat together are sweet together. They not only feel happier, they also feel fewer negative emotions such as anger, anxiety and fear.
Unlike in Finland, Mexico and Australia, Americans are increasingly loners. The authors of the report write, “In 2023, roughly 1 in 4 Americans reported eating all of their meals alone the previous day – an increase of 53% since 2003. Dining alone has become more prevalent for every age group, but especially for young people.”
So there you have one of the reasons Americans are more depressed than their Scandinavian peers. They’re lonely. Those who are eating all their meals alone just don’t have anyone to eat with, with whom they feel connected, on whom they feel they can rely, and whom they trust.
“Happiness,” ChatGPT, 2025
The Gallup team continues, “Meal sharing also appears to be closely related to some, but not all, measures of social connectedness. Most notably, countries where people share relatively more meals tend to display higher levels of social support and positive reciprocity, and lower levels of loneliness.” So it isn’t just a matter of eating alone. That is a symptom of something else that is going on, which is that a lot of people increasingly lack a support network.
I’m alarmed that American young people are especially isolated and that a significant percent are eating their meals alone.
The United States and South Korea are two rare countries where “deaths of despair” from suicide or overdoses have not declined over the past two decades. In the US, one reason for high rates of deaths of despair is the easy availability of guns, which is associated with higher rates of suicide. Some 55% of US suicides involve a gun.
Drug overdoses in the US are high in part because wealthy drug interests promote policies that lead to patients getting addicted to opioids. Deaths from drug overdoses are such a serious issue in the US that they have contributed to a decline in life expectancy by nearly a year.
The Gallup researchers are convinced that our low happiness scores in the US help explain our miserable politics. They point out, “the decline in happiness and social trust explains a large share of the rise in political polarisation and votes against ‘the system’.”
They find that “dissatisfaction with democracy is particularly high when people express a low level of life satisfaction (pink and blue), especially in Europe.”
People in the US report low life satisfaction compared to Scandinavia or Mexico. One reason is that they do not trust others. But the joke is on them, since they have unrealistic levels of suspicion of others. People in the US are far more likely to return a lost wallet to its owner than many Americans assume. Their cynicism and distrust, which is based on false impressions, makes them depressed.
The happiness researchers make the fascinating discovery that: “Among unhappy people attracted by the extremes of the political spectrum, low-trust people are more often found on the far right, whereas high-trust people are more inclined to vote for the far left.”
Since generosity to others and feeling compassion for them are highly correlated with the well-being of the donors, the currentdestruction of America’s systems of organized benevolence and the censuring of empathy are a one-way ticket to hell.
So fascists are sad people who don’t trust others. Communists are sad people who do trust others. The pollsters say it isn’t so much about class struggle as about mood swings.
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